Drop and rebuild an index in Azure Cognitive Search from Azure Portal

Question

I have an indexer connected to an index and a data source which in turn is connected to a blob storage in which there are some documents.

The point is that when I delete a document from the blob storage and restart the indexer the document still remains in the index.

I followed the guide https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/search-howto-reindex but I don't quite understand the procedure. I would like a solution that can be implemented directly from the azure portal.

Thanks for your attention!!!

Answer 1

Hi @Alessandro Guazzo , thanks for the question

When you delete a document from the blob storage and run the indexer, the document still remains in the index because the indexer doesn’t automatically handle deletions. [The indexer is not aware that a document has been deleted from the data source]

Unfortunately, this operation cannot be performed directly from the Azure portal and requires using the Azure Cognitive Search REST API.

Here's how you can do it using the Azure portal:

Navigate to Your Index:

• Go to the Azure portal.
• Find and select your Azure Cognitive Search service.

Access Your Index:

• Click on your search service.
• In the left-hand menu, click on "Indexes" to see the list of indexes associated with your service.
• Click on the index where you want to remove the deleted document.

Reindex Your Data Source:

• In the index details page, click on "Indexers" in the left-hand menu.
• You should see an indexer that corresponds to your data source (the one connected to your Blob Storage). Click on that indexer.

Initiate Reindexing:

• In the indexer details page, click on "Run" to start the reindexing process.

This action will reprocess all the data in your data source (including your Blob Storage) and update your Azure Cognitive Search index accordingly. Any deleted documents in the data source will be removed from the index during this process.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions.

Best,

Grace